[MLA] Urgent thoughts re: Buddy. DO NOT SEE BUDDY WITHOUT DISCUSSING THIS WITH THE REST OF US IN NYC

[Bob Katz]

Dear Eelco: Be VERY Careful about this topic of switching loudness 
normalization in ---- with Buddy. I do know he has thought about it 
already as I've had some brief conversations with him about this 
already. HOWEVER, we do not want to postpone Apple normalization by 
giving him the wrong ideas. And so we must discuss this BEFORE you talk 
to Buddy.

Below I repeat my post of 10/15 as points of discussion among US first, 
BEFORE you talk to Buddy. And in fact I urge a discussion with you, me, 
Thomas and the rest BEFORE you talk to Buddy. We can meet together at 
the show if you wish.

If Buddy had not suggested talking to you alone for sure more of us 
would have been in that conversation with him. We have to be on the same 
page first. Fortunately, Buddy is a level-headed person and a good 
executive so he will take some things into account.

The main point I want to make is that you are worried too much about a 
"frictionless transition". Making any mitigation to try to avoid user 
complaints is a very dangerous and complicated adjustment that could 
just as easily backfire! It's better that Apple prepare for possible 
user complaints, but do not make any attempts to mitigate loudness 
changes when normalization kicks in. It's safer and better to just suck 
your gut in, make the change and look out for user complaints. If you 
want to be real safe, you do a beta test on any mitigation proposal. I 
would participate in any Apple Beta test of this issue.

Keep in mind: Most listeners just adjust their volume controls and go 
on. They're used to adjusting volume. It's really not such a big deal!  
Do you think the switch to EBU-R128 was a big problem? No.... listeners 
just made a volume control adjustment and it was done. After 
normalization comes in they'll discover they're moving their volume 
controls much less, so that's exactly the point! Kevin, I think you're 
worried about a non-problem.

For a mitigation approach you would have to do a survey of what kinds of 
listeners there are and the average impact of a switch to normalization. 
You cannot assume. And then beta test!

There are some other considerations I repeat below.



Best wishes,


Bob K.

Below is a repeat of my previous post:


On 10/14/17 1:36 PM, Kevin Gross wrote:


> The question is, is there a way that the OS can mitigate the 
> difference between normalization on and off?


That is a VERY difficult question that we've all been wrestling with for 
years. I predict that only a small percentage of users will complain. 
Most of them will just turn their volume controls up a little and 
cruise. So I would not suggest any kind of complex modification that 
could become a real software nightmare --- and postpone the introduction 
of normalization, which we do not want.

There are three classes of listeners who may complain after the switch:

1) Listeners who've been listening to soft material on European-weakened 
mobile devices. Hopefully the -14 loudest song target for the loudest 
song in album norm will give sufficient volume-control-room on mobile 
devices. Thomas was the one to suggest the -14 target for album norm and 
I bet he already thinks it would work for current European devices or he 
would have put his foot down by now  :-)   Thomas?

2) Deaf listeners who like to listen to hard rock LOUD. Things will come 
down a bit. But my experience with the iPhone at least shows there's 
tons of room on the volume control on the American device.

So I think Tidal should stress the positive, as has been noted already 
in this thread. They can say, "if you notice the volume has come down a 
bit after this change, just turn your volume control up a bit and your 
experience will be even better than before normalization."

3) *Attention Eelco: *Listeners who like to listen softly to background 
music rather than foreground music, at low levels. They're looking for a 
"processed, broadcast-style radio sound". THIS GROUP OF LISTENERS IS THE 
REAL GOTCHA. That's because track normalization is a form of upward 
compression: Soft songs are played louder than they are intended to be. 
So it forms a kind of free compressor for people who are playing music 
softly and not attentively. The only solution I think is to provide a 
track normalization option for those listeners or a compression option. 
Eelco, I think you should mentally prepare Tidal for this kind of 
listener. But honestly, I don't think the kind of listener who 
gravitates to Tidal is a background music listener so this may be more 
of a problem for Spotify and Prodigy....  Tidal is a quality-oriented 
service.
On 10/15/17 3:57 PM, Grimm | Eelco wrote:
> Hi Kevin,
>
>> As you said originally, doing a frictionless UX transition to normalization always-on or on-by-default is an interesting problem. I think Buddy would be interested in this problem and might throw out some important information we don't know about iTunes or iOS if you got him to do some brainstorming on it.
> Very good suggestion. I have put it on my agenda to discuss with Buddy.
>
> Cheers,
> Eelco
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> MLA at grimmaudio.nl
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-- 

If you want good sound on your album, come to Bob Katz 407-831-0233 
DIGITAL DOMAIN MASTERING STUDIO Author: *Mastering Audio *Digital Domain 
Website <http://www.digido.com/> No trees were killed in the sending of 
this message. However a large number of electrons were terribly 
inconvenienced.

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